From: Paul H. <nk...@um...> - 2003-12-07 17:05:40
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On Fri, 5 Dec 2003 19:31:29 +0200, "Oren Ben-Kiki" <or...@be...> wrote: > I was discussing date/time formats with a friend the other day and I > hit > upon the following format: > > yyyy-mm-dd[+hh:mm:ss[+tz]] That's almost exactly like ISO 8601, except the latter uses T instead of + to separate date and time, and the symbol before timezone is either + (for time zones east of the zero meridian) or - (for time zones west of the zero meridian). (Not passing the international date line, of course!) > For example: > > 2003-12-05+18:33:00+02 For example: 2003-12-05T18:33:00+0200 > Using a "+" makes the timestamp a "single thing" again and is rather > readable. It is also tempting to look at the result as an expression > for > computing the time in seconds in UTC: <day> + <time-of-day> + > <time-zone>. Alas, the time zone sign is reversed... It always bugged > me > to write <time>+<tz>. You never add the <time> and the <tz>, it makes > no > sense. You have to compute <time> *minus* <tz> to get the UTC time. I live in the USA Eastern timezone (EST), where it's almost noon right now. Here's the current time for me, expressed two ways: 11:53:26+0500 (i.e., EST) 16:53:26+0000 (i.e., GMT or whatever) This makes sense to me -- 11:53 + 05:00 = 16:53 + 00:00. For someone in Central Europe, the time now is... 18:53:26-0200 16:53:26+0000 I.e., 18:53 - 02:00 = 16:53 + 0000. (I don't know if -0000 and +0000 are both valid TZs.) Just my two minor currency units' worth... Paul. -- Paul Hoffman :: Taubman Medical Library :: Univ. of Michigan nk...@um... :: nk...@nk... :: http://www.nkuitse.com/ |